Ken Dryden on The Game

The pose that made Ken Dryden
famous. (Wayne Newton photo)

When it comes to hockey in Canada, Ken Dryden is an icon. Star goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens, author of The Game, executive for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Liberal MP and candidate for prime minister. Quite a CV. Not to mention his famous pose greets visitors at the Hockey Hall of Fame.
QMI sportswriter Steve Simmons is an all-star among hockey writers in Canada. I never miss his Toronto Sun column.
Follow this link to what happens when the two of them talk hockey - in Dryden's case, reluctantly.

Drunken teens at the highest level

I like this item from Steve Simmons' column today in the Toronto Sun. Tell me again why the Russian teenagers were not stopped from drinking underage in Buffalo? How would minor hockey coaches handle behaviour like this from teenagers? Their celebration on the ice was fantastic and appropriate. Their alcohol consumption afterwards was wrong.
Here's what the always excellent Simmons says:
No surprise that the Russian juniors were kicked off their flight Thursday. I happened to be in the bar at the Adams Mark hotel in downtown Buffalo post-game Wednesday night and the young Russians were not exactly being asked to show their ID. I left just before 1:30 a.m. But most of the Russians, still wearing their jerseys, were in the bar, loudly chanting “Beat Canada” in between chugs of something that wasn’t necessarily legal for teenagers ... 

Greg Walsh gets shafted by OMHA

Steve Simmons is my favourite sports columnist for Sun Media. He's also an experienced volunteer minor hockey coach. Here's what he says about the Ontario Minor Hockey Association and Peterborough house league coach Greg Walsh. Clearly, the suspension is unfair and the public backlash has only just begun to harm the OMHA and the image of minor hockey.
The better solution to this whole situation would have been a media conference apology involving the kids, two coaches and OMHA head.
Suspending Walsh for a year makes the OMHA look like it condones racism and shafts volunteers who are sincere in trying to mold teenagers into fine young men.
Here is what Steve wrote in the online version of his column.

BLINDNESS OF MINOR HOCKEY

For more than 20 seasons, under all kinds of circumstances, I have coached various levels of minor hockey in the province. I have been suspended more than once and argued against my players’ suspensions vociferously and often have been frustrated by rules that benefit the administrators but not the participants. The curious ruling this week by the Ontario Minor Hockey Association was that house league coach Greg Walsh would be suspended for pulling his team from the ice after a racial slur had been uttered by an opposing player. All Walsh asked for — and didn’t get — was an apology. Nothing more. He didn’t want his team to participate in a game being played under so ugly a tenor. The player in question wound up with a three-game suspension. The coach got the season. I would like to say I’m surprised by the ruling, but I’ve been around long enough to know that bull-headed illogic, rather than common sense, prevails too often in minor hockey rulings.

Steve Simmons, NHL and minor hockey

Always excellent sports columnist Steve Simmons writes in today's Toronto Sun (and Monday's London Free Press): "In every NHL game there are six or seven hits that would get you suspended in minor hockey: It's hard for kids who watch the NHL to understand what they can and cannot do in their own games."
Interesting that some hits from behind will get a kid tossed from a game when they are 12 or 13, but part of the routine when they are 16 or 17. And don't even get me started with hits to the head and late hits in which the puck is nowhere close and the hit in no way tactical to the game - just an intimidation move or burst of teen boy bravado.
Still, it's hits, not goals or great saves, that get the biggest response from benches and hockey moms. Hockey dads just quietly grin or grimace.
Here's the Toronto Sun link to Simmon's full column.
http://www.torontosun.com/sports/columnists/steve_simmons/2010/10/23/15805331.html